OK, Amsterdam has a bunch of canals and so it has a bunch of bridges. And as night follows day (and other cliches for a cliched subject) I had to take pictures of these picturesque scenes. I am a slave to my culture.

The Leidsegracht joins the Herengracht near my hotel. At night the bridges' arches are outlined with lights. So I took a few shots looking down the Leidsegracht from the bank of the Herengracht.

Here are three variations on that theme (versions with more detail are available by clicking on the photos).

The tough part was doing this without a tripod. I had to set the camera on nearby stable objects and these weren't always conveniently placed or angled for my purposes. The last shot in that series the camera was propped on a round railing (visible in the foreground of the 1st shot). I thought about using the wooden bumper in the foreground, but concluded it was too low.

This shot looking down the Herengracht toward the Leidsestraat bridge is an example. I had to use a magazine (thank you Eustace Tilley) as a prop on top of a utility box to get a good angle. I like how the long exposure shows the clouds.

I moved a little closer to the Leidsestraat and experimented again with spotting the camera on the rail. These next two shots are pretty much the same except for the exposure time. (Oh, that's a tram going across the bridge in the next photo.)

I really like the next shot because the details are there yet are shrouded. Likewise, I think the dark water is a better mirror. Because it is so dark I've cropped it to save information instead of reducing its size. While viewing this on a Sony and generic monitors I found that monitor quality varies and that while the Sony did a great job, the generic rendered a very dark picture. If you can't see much of anything in this picture, click here to see a lighter version.